Promotion

Prometheus plot rumours confuse

It's not entirely clear what we're going to see in this new film from Ridley Scott now called Prometheus, the one that was supposed to be the single, not double, Alien prequel and has now transformed into something else through the writing process.

While I love the fact that everyone is so willing to let the story change, I am confused as to how much it could depart from the original. So to the aide come some friendly Interflab rumours and a rather interesting observation.

Insert usual interflab rumour warning here and follow the rest knowing how far Prometheus is into writing, production and development, as well as realising that it's already changed a few times there's no reason it won't change again.

We'd already heard that the Alien prequel, which was once two films by Ridley Scottt's own admission and then one by the studio denial, was going to begin with the huge Alien pilot that we see dead in the space ship at the beginning of Alien, and from there the speculation began as to why it was carrying a cargo hold full of Aliens.

Talk was of terraforming, but I personally favoured the biological weapon option, the race had created this creature that could be let loose on a planet and destroy all creatures, leaving only the Alien itself. As I discussed in a previous story you would have to assume that the race who created this weapon would have had to have some way of destroying it or controlling it once they had released it, so who knows how that aspect of the story will pan out.

However all that was quashed when we heard that during the development and writing they had come up with another idea and that they were scrapping the whole Alien prequel and developing this instead, Prometheus.

Now there's a question as to how far removed from the original Alien films Prometheus is going to be, for there's still talk of the huge alien from the first film, the Aliens themselves, and everything that would be in the prequel. I'm confused.

Before the story in Rope of Silicon got to the rumour that they had heard it discussed the original Ridley Scott commentary from Alien, and his commentary about the whole biological weapon idea.

The writer had gone back and listened to Scott's audio commentary where the director reveals that he doesn't have a specific plan for the huge alien but that he's part of a military operation and that this alien could well be the carrier of the eggs to take it to a planet where they will hatch and "integrate in a very aggressive way" into the society where it's dropped - destroy them all I think is the actual answer.

Well thinking on all that let's look at the rumour they have through Sky which suggests something rather more interesting:

"Part of the film will be shot in Morocco. I've heard that some sort of archaeological dig where they discover alien DNA takes place there and that DNA gives them the coordinates for an alien world. I've also heard Morocco is being used for alien planet landscapes so I'm not sure if it's an archaeological dig on another planet..."

They go on to claim that the main ship in the film will be piloted by an enormous head which is integrated with the ship's technology. Interesting, although I'm not entirely sure that fits in with the timeframe, would we have been using creatures integrated with technology to fly us around thirty years before the ships we see in Alien and Aliens?

The interesting part of all this is the filming in Morocco bit. Is this the backdrop they are using to film the dark side of the Moon? As Scott previously said:

"It's the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?"

Wouldn't it be interesting if they were on Earth or the Moon and discovered this DNA material? Perhaps that's why most of everything that was living on Earth was wiped out and not some ice age?

While I like that idea, I think they'll be filming for another planet, although it be the Moon. Still, it all raises questions as to what we are seeing in this new film that isn't a prequel. Are we going to be seeing Aliens and such? How much is Prometheus not going to be an Alien prequel then?